


Before Sunrise

by ironztark



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Iron Man (Movies), IronStrange - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Intense Thoughts, M/M, Strangers to Friends, They need a hug, Vienna, deep thoughts, stephen has scars, they met on a train, tony has scars, young ironstrange
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:53:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26285251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironztark/pseuds/ironztark
Summary: While traveling on a train in Europe, Stephen meets Tony, an American-Italian man. On his last day in Europe before returning to the U.S., he decides to spend his remaining hours with him.
Relationships: Tony Stark/Stephen Strange
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Before Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone!  
> I hope everyone is safe.
> 
> This is my first shot in a multi chapter story, it's based on my favorite film trilogy, Before Sunrise by Richard Linklater. I hope you like it.
> 
> English is not my first language so apologies in advance.

Summer 1995. The Eurail rolls along. Inside, passengers sleep, read, and stare out the windows. A few walk up and down the aisles. Tony, in his mid-twenties, is curled up in his seat trying to read Story of the Eye. Strikingly attractive, he plays it down by wearing a skinny jeans, black jacket, his hair messy but the kind of mess you put work on, an AC/DC t-shirt and sneakers. He continues reading while taking an occasional bite of a chocolate bar.  
Suddenly a couple, two fortyish types who have been arguing semiquietly in the seat behind Tony, start yelling at each other in German. The wife takes a swipe at the newspaper the husband has been screening him behind.

“Will you put down that damn  
newspaper and listen to me?” she angrily talks in German.

“What have I been doing the last  
thirty minutes? Would you shut up for Christ’s sake?” he snaps back.

“You shut up! How dare you tell me  
to shut up! It’s the same damn thing all over again! I can’t believe—“ 

“I said shut up! I’m putting down  
my newspaper and telling you to shut up.”

Tony suddenly decides to get up, grabs his bag, and starts looking for another seat. A few rows back, he finds a seat across the aisle where there’s only one man sitting. Tony looks at him and thinks he also looks in his mid-twenties. The man is engrossed in Klaus Kinski’s memoir, All I Need Is Love. He’s really good looking, sharp cheekbones, also wearing jeans in what seems miles of legs. He’s really trying to read his book. 

Before sitting down, they make eye contact and kind of shake their heads and smile at the tension. Just as Tony settles in and goes back to his book, the wife gets up and storms down the aisle. The man and Tony follow her with their eyes, and as she passes them, they find they are looking right at each other. The stranger makes a funny “uh- oh” face.

“Do you have any idea what they’re  
arguing about? Do you speak English?” the young man has a deep soothing voice.

“Yes. But no, I don’t know. My German is not that good,” Tony answers “Have you ever heard that as couples get older they lose their ability to hear each other?

“Really?” 

“Supposedly men lose their ability  
to hear higher-pitched sounds and women eventually lose hearing on the low end. I guess they sort of nullify each other or something.”

The stranger smiles. “Must be nature’s way of allowing couples to grow old together and not kill each other, I guess.”

There’s a slightly awkward moment where they don’t know if they should continue talking or not. Tony glances back down at his book but the man keeps looking at him.

“What are you reading?”

Tony holds up his book so he can see what it is. “How about you?”

He shows him what he’s reading. Neither has much to say about the other’s reading material.

“There are so many weird people on  
the train, right? Last week on my way to Budapest I was sitting and talking with four other people in the lounge car and it turned out that three of them had killed people.”

“No way!”

Tony and the stranger share a laugh. “Really. One was a war veteran, one  
had murdered her boyfriend, and another had caused a bad car wreck.”

“So you were the only one who hadn’t  
killed anyone?” the man teases.

“No, I was one of them. Which one  
do you think?” Tony laughs again and he slowly joins him.

“I know what you mean. I’ve met  
some weirdos. There was this British guy sitting across from me the other day who kept throwing his body against the back of his chair, yelling about how we should all join together and stop the train. He was saying, “Everybody, now, we can stop technology. All together...”

“So what happened?”

The man demonstrates by throwing his body against his seat.

“And you know, me and a few others  
tried for a while, but we couldn’t stop technology.l

The wife who stormed away earlier suddenly comes back and the argument resumes, right in front of them.

“I was thinking about going to the  
lounge car sometime soon. You wanna go?”

Listening to the couple argue was ruining Tony’s day so he answered without missing a beat. “We better.” 

They get up and walk to the door of their car. He pushes the ”Door Open” button, and as the door opens, he extends his hand towards Tony.

“Oh, I’m Stephen by the way.”

“Tony.”

They proceed through the door and Tony pushes the button to enter the next car. There is some confusion as to who is opening the door for whom before Tony proceeds and Stephen follows him toward the lounge car.

They sit at a table in the near end, they both decided to order chips and beers, which the waiter promptly gives them.

“So how do you speak such good  
English?” 

“I’m American. My mom is Italian, I’ve been living in Milan since I was six so that’s probably why my accent is a bit off,” Tony explains to him. “How do you speak such good English?”

“ Well, I’m also American,” Stephen laughs “But I still live in New York.”

“I know. It’s a joke. I knew you  
were American, and, of course, you don’t speak any other language.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m the dumb, vulgar  
American who has no culture. But I tried. I want you to know I took four years of French. I tried, I was ready. When I was in Paris, I was standing in line at the metro going, “Un billet, s’il vous plâit.” And  
then I got up to the window, I looked up at the lady and blanked out. “Uh, uh, I need a ticket for the subway.” No more French for me. But for your information I can speak some Spanish,” Stephen tells the story and Tony outright laughs out loud, shaking his head “So where are you headed? 

“I study in Paris. My class starts  
next week.” 

“Where do you go to school?”

“La Sorbonne. You know?”

“Sure,” he rolls his eyes in a dumb way.” But you were in Budapest?

“Yeah, I was visiting my  
grandmother.”

“How is she?”

“Okay,” Tony doesn’t want to talk about it. “How about you— where are you going?”

“Vienna.”

“What’s there?”

“I don’t know. I’m flying out of  
there tomorrow morning.” Stephen says, changing his weight on his chair.

“Are you on a holiday?”

“I don’t know what I’m on. I’ve  
just been traveling around the last two or three weeks.”

“Were you visiting friends, or just  
going around on your own?”

“I visited a friend in Madrid for a  
while, but mostly I’ve just been...“ Stephen stops his line of thought and decides to change topics. “I got one of those Eurail passes, and you know what’s fascinating about traveling around? You spend all this time trying to reach your destination, you get there, you look around, it’s never exactly what you’d hoped, you head off somewhere else, and hope for something better.”

“It’s like getting ready for a  
party, getting there, and falling asleep. That’s why when I’m traveling I kind of force myself not to expect anything from anywhere or anyone. And then, whatever happens is a surprise. The most insignificant thing can become an endless subject of interest, right?” Tony gets on board with the new conversation. 

“That’s what I like about traveling— you can sit down, maybe talk to someone interesting, see something beautiful, read a good book, and that’s enough to qualify a good day. You do that at home and everyone thinks you’re a bum.”

Tony takes a second. “I like that though. But it’s like my favorite American writers. They describe everything you wouldn’t want to live through, and yet you cannot stop reading of this exciting, boring life.”

“So what do you study? Stephen jumps to another subject.

“Engineering. But I haven’t decided  
yet what I really want to do.”

“Do you have other things on your mind?”

“Sometimes I think about studying Literature.”

Stephen frowns. “Engineering to literature is a big difference, hun?”

“Yeah, but...” Tony begins. “I kind of had this obsession a few years ago about creating a new form of expression. It was of course an abstract and lost quest, but I was feeling all art forms seemed used up. I was especially rejecting words. They seemed so rusted and dirty. And they’ve been used for such evil ends. Sometimes, you know, language is so limited. It’s like... if you think about it...” 

Tony holds his own hands out fairly wide and round. “This is an individual’s mental experience and perception and...” He now holds his hands together and forms a small circle. “This is how much can be expressed through language. We just don’t have words for so many of the impressions we have.” Tony parts his hands and gestures to the large outer circle. “So most of our life we will never  
be able to express to anyone.”

They sit there for an extended moment, neither sure what to say next. Stephen is just staring at him in what seems confusion and pure adoration. The feeling crosses his eyes for just a second and suddenly Stephen smiles and jokingly starts to get up.

“So I guess... that’s it— it’s been  
nice not communicating with you.”

They both laugh.

“Really, though,” Stephen ponders “I basically agree with you, and maybe it’s a sad face of life, but I think it doesn’t bother me that much. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I think that lack of communication frustrates women more than men.”

“Yes, because men are perfectly  
content to sit in front of TV all day drinking beer and watching sports.” Tony teases.

“Yeah, that’s true, but have you  
ever done that? I did it once with a friend of mine. Drank some beer, had some chips, and watched a couple of games. It was the first time in years I literally jumped for joy. On some level it’s sticking your head in the sand, but on another I think it must serve some tribal purpose.”

“I actually agree with you. I kind  
of like sports. I mean, one of my friends loves it so I watch it from time to time. We have a good time,” Tony takes a sip from his beer “So you haven’t told me what you do. Are you still in school?”

“I start Med School next semester.”

“That’s interesting!” Tony says sincerely. “Do you know what you wanna specialize in?”

“Neurology.”

“Well, I hope you get there.” Tony lifts his beer and they cheer for that.

“Are you working?” Tony asks him.

“I have a stupid job like everyone  
else.”

“Is it boring? You’re not happy?”

“No, it’s a decent job. I don’t get  
paid that much. I don’t do that much, “It pays the bills.”

“So what is the job?”

“I write for a newspaper, the Fort  
Worth Star-Telegram, and pretty much get to do what I want there creatively, so it’s okay.”

“So you write?”

“Kinda.”

“Has this trip been good for you?” Tony can change the subject too.

“Yeah. I mean, on one level, it  
sucked, but sitting on a train and staring out the window for days on end has actually been kind of great.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve had an idea I probably would  
never have had otherwise. Can I tell you about it?” Stephen secretly tells him.

“Yes.”

“Some friends of mine are these  
cable access producers— you know, anyone can produce a program, and they have to show it. I got really jazzed about it. I imagined a show I want to produce that would last an entire year, twenty-four hours a day. I want to get 365 different video producers around the world to each make their own twenty-four- hour-long document of real time, capturing life around them just as it is lived. So it’d be people waking up, taking a long shower, getting a cup of coffee and reading the paper for twenty minutes, a long drive to work.”

“You mean all those boring, mundane  
things everyone has to do every day of their life?”

“I was going to say the poetry of  
day-to-day life,” Stephen speaks with his hands. “I mean, Why is your dog so great  
just for sleeping in the sun? And a guy getting money out of a bank machine is a moron?”

“So you can put on the TV at any  
time of the day and see what other people are doing at the same time.”

“Right. It’s like parallel lives.”

“That’s great. I once lived in a  
big apartment I was sharing with friends, and we could see ten other apartments from the window. I would cut down the light, sit at the window, and watch them sitting on a couch doing nothing. It was fascinating.”

“See? That’s the trick. Life is not  
really about drama. That we all do the same shit and going to some market in Arabia is the same as going to Kmart in Miami. People believe they are missing out, that everyone else has this great and exciting life and they don’t. I mean, we all have to get dressed, feed the kids, get our driver’s licence renewed, look up what time the afternoon matinee starts, lose ourselves in entertainment, lose ourselves in sex, routine, getting a little too drunk, buying a present for someone you don’t like very much-- you feel guilty about not liking them, so you spend a little too much money...” Stephen talks excitedly and Tony sees pure adoration in his eyes.

“So, it’s like a National Geographic  
program on people.”

“Exactly.”

They share a laugh again.

“I can see it: twenty-four boring  
hours and a three-minute sex scene where he falls asleep right after.”

“Exactly. And that would be an  
exciting episode. Maybe you and your friends can do one of those episodes from Paris. The key to making this work would be in the distribution. Getting the tapes from town to town on time...But it would play continuously twenty-four hours for a year on stations around the world.”

When Tony was gonna give a response, the waiter finally arrives and gives them the menus. 

Some time has passed. They have dirty dishes in front of them. Even whey they ate in silence, listening to the train and nature outside, they seemed more relaxed with each other, more forthright, less self-conscious, a little more intimate.

Tony decides to break the silence. “My parents have never really spoken  
of the possibility of me falling in love or getting married or having children. You see, my dad has a company so since I was a kid, they expect me to take over one day.” 

“Corporate people.” Stephen rolls his eyes and Tony hides a smile.

“Yeah, I’d say to my dad I wanted to  
be a writer and he’d say journalist. I’d say I wanted to have a refuge for stray cats and he’d say veterinarian. I’d say I wanted to be an actress and he’d say TV newscaster,” Tony takes a deep sigh. “It was this constant conversion of my fanciful ambitions into practical moneymaking ventures.”

“That’s why you’re majoring in engineering?” He nods.

“Parents just want you to have a  
nice career so they can tell their friends something interesting,” Stephen waits a beat “I must had a pretty decent bullshit detector when I was a kid. I always knew when they were lying to me. By the time I was in highschool, I was dead set on listening to what everyone thought I should be doing with my life and then almost systematically doing the opposite. They weren’t really mean about it. All their typical ambitions sounded so mediocre.” 

“So you went rogue?”

“See, I was born and raised in Nebraska.” Stephen tells him in a joking tone and Tony shakes his head in a “Oh I got it now” way.

“If you have parents that never  
fully contradict anything you want to do and are basically nice and supportive, it makes it harder to officially complain. Even when they are wrong. It’s this passive- aggressive shit. I can’t stand it.”

Stephen takes a swig of water and chews some ice.

“Yeah, but despite plenty of  
bullshit, I still remember being a kid as a magical time.” Stephen says.

“Riding horses and swimming in lakes?” Tony teases.

“I remember my mom explaining death to me. I was barely a teenager, my sister and I went to swim and she drowned.” 

“I’m so sorry.” Tony apologetics tells him and Stephen just shakes it off.

“Anyway, I was reading in the backyard a month or so later, and it was drizzling a bit, and you know that effect the Sun has on water, right?” Tony nods “Through that mist, I could see my sister standing there, just kind of smiling, looking at me until she disappeared.” Stephen’s voice barely a whisper. 

“My parents gave me this rap about  
how I imagined it and how when people die you never see them again. But, I knew what I had seen, and even though I’ve never seen anything like that since, I’ve never really been very afraid of death.”

“That’s good you can have that attitude toward death. I think I am afraid of death twenty-four hours a day. That’s why I’m on the train. I could have flown to Paris. I’m just afraid of flying. Even though statistics say it’s safer, I can’t help it. When I’m sitting in a plane, I already can see an explosion, me falling through the clouds. I’m so afraid of the few seconds of consciousness before dying. I mean, when you know for sure you’re gonna die. I can’t help anticipating the worst. Like, I was in the park with this friend of mine. There were little kids playing around. This mother was throwing her child up in the air. My friend was smiling and thought it was so wonderful, and all I could think of was her dropping it. I could already see all the blood on the ground. The big panic, the mother crying...I think like this all the time. It’s exhausting.” Tony chuckles trying to hide his discomfort and looks at the window, noticing the train is pulling into the city.

“This is Vienna. You get off here, right?

“Drag,” Stephen sighs. “I wish I would have met you earlier. I really like talking to you.”

“It was really nice talking to you,  
too.” Tony smiles.

“I’ve hardly talked to anyone in  
weeks.”

The train comes to a final stop. The doors open and soon everyone is unboarding and boarding. With a slight smile, Stephen looks intensely at Tony.

“I have an admittedly insane  
thought. If I don’t ask you this, it’ll be one of those things that will haunt me forever.”

“What?”

He just looks at him a little nervously and can’t say it. Tony is truly intrigued and a little excited at what he’s struggling with.

Stephen finally says: “I want to keep talking with you. I mean, I have no idea what your situation is, but I feel some kind of...connection.”

Tony smiles again. “Yeah, me too.”

“So how about this,” Stephen stands up, looking for his bag. “Okay, good...I want you to get off the train in Vienna with me. We can check out the town.”

Tony smiles at the thought but is not totally sure.

“So what would we do?”

“I don’t know. All I know is I’m  
getting on this Austria Airlines flight at nine-thirty tomorrow morning and I can’t really afford a hotel and we’ll probably just wander around all night. If I turn out to be a psycho, you can bail out anytime and get back on the next train, right?” 

Stephen looks and him and Tony is still thinking.

“Think of it like this. Jump ahead  
ten, twenty years. Your marriage just doesn’t have that same energy anymore. You start to blame your wife or husband. You think of all the guys and girls you’ve met and all the ones you never pursued and how things might have been different if you’d just picked up with one of them. Well, I’m one of them. You can consider this traveling back in time, to see what you are missing. See, this is really a big favor to both you and your future husband slash wife— it’s a chance to see how you really haven’t missed anything. That I’m just as boring and unmotivated as they are, hopefully more.”

He smiles a little, ponders the situation, and then just stands up. “How can you tell I’m into girls and boys?”

“I’m gay,” Stephen tells him promptly “I thought it was implied when I hated on Nebraska back there.” 

Tony laughs.

“And this is all you’re getting from my story?”

“I’m not sure if I got all the story,” Tony stands up with him. “but let me get my bag.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to leave kudos or comments!!


End file.
